(9/24 and 9/25)
. . . and the scenery on the sides. Unlike Canyonlands or Mesa Verde, however, at Bryce we were not looking into steep-sided canyons but rather onto fantastically decorated slopes.
The rock here glows in varying shades of salmon, pink, and white.
Once again, we found ourselves on top of a mesa, admiring both the forest on top . . .
This colorful rock, the Claron formation of early Cenozoic age, is the youngest sedimentary rock we have seen or will see on the Colorado Plateau. It lies above the late Mesozoic rock we saw at Mesa Verde, above the early and middle Mesozoic rock we saw at Arches and Capitol Reef and will see again at Zion, and way above the Paleozoic rock we will see at the Grand Canyon.
The Claron formation is special for its colors and for the way it erodes. It is composed of silt, sand and lime carried down to landlocked lakes by rivers from mountains having marine sediments. When lake levels were low, the roots of aquatic plants helped oxidize the iron that was present, contributing the colors. When lake levels were higher, a whiter limestone was deposited, but most of that has been eroded off here. The white bands seen here may be due to deposition during drier periods when the mineral concentration in the water was very high and plants did not grow.
After a period of uplift, this rock was exposed by headward erosion of stream beds from a neighboring valley into the sides of the mesa.
